FemaleFirst.co.uk: DVD: Code Unknown [2001] [DVD]

Code Unknown [2001] [DVD]
enlarge	Director: Michael Haneke Actors: Juliette Binoche, Thierry Neuvic, Josef Bierbichler, Alexandre Hamidi, Maimouna Hélène Diarra Studio: Artificial Eye Category: DVD List Price: ~~£19.99~~ Buy New: £5.25 as of 24/11/2009 10:38 GMT details You Save: £14.74 (74%) New (11) Used (1) Collectible (1) from £5.25 Seller: lady-kidderminster Rating: 13 reviews Sales Rank: 6904 Format: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen, Import Languages: Arabic (Original Language), English (Original Language), French (Original Language), German (Original Language), Romanian (Original Language), English (Unknown), German (Unknown), French (Unknown), English (Subtitled) Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over Region: 2 Discs: 1 Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Number Of Discs: 1 Running Time: 112 Minutes Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2 Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 EAN: 5021866204307 ASIN: B00005NZHT Theatrical Release Date: 2000 Release Date: November 19, 2001 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days


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Editorial Reviews: Amazon.co.uk Review In the prelude to ICode Unknown/I, we watch as a class of deaf children play a very sophisticated game of charades. In response to a blank-faced girl shrinking slowly against a wall, the children guess: is it sadness, isolation, loneliness? We are not told the answer before director Michael Haneke cuts to the extraordinary opening sequence of the film. This nine-minute tracking shot along a busy Parisian boulevard, introduces the film's central characters: Amadou, a first generation French boy of West African descent; Maria, a Romanian illegal immigrant; and Anne (Juliette Binoche), a French actress, trying to make the leap from theatre to film. However, this is the only time we will see these characters together in one place before the film fractures into a series of vignettes, which slowly describe their lives, their cultural isolation and their search for small moments of beauty within this alienation.pMichael Haneke has been credited with reinvigorating and refreshing Austrian cinema with expectation-smashing early films such as IFunny Games/I; if his newest pan-European films are anything to go by, he could be set to do the same for Euro cinema in general. Though ICode Unknown/I is very different from Haneke's IBenny's Video/I or IFunny Games/I, like them this film also implicates and involves the viewer in the guilt of the on-screen characters. Its structure of intricately woven story strands is entirely provocative and stirring--politically, aesthetically and emotionally. It's exactly the type of film you want to watch again and again. As with the players of the opening game of charades, we won't be given any easy answers to questions about our collective guilt in the racism and alienation of an undeniably multicultural, multiethnic Europe. --ITricia Tuttle/I

Customer Reviews: Showing reviews 1-5 of 13 1 2 3 Next » Conscience and Consequence October 10, 2001 65 out of 67 found this review helpful haneke's masterful look at a modern European city examines exactly what it is like to 'exist' in western society. The multilayered story has many protagonists and follows their lives after they are linked by a single event. Anne (Binoche) is an actress, her boyfriend Georges is a war photographer, his brother Jean has run away from home, their father struggles to manage his farm and keep his emotions supressed. Amidou is a first generation african imigrant, who teaches deaf children music, his father is a taxi driver. Maria, from Romania, has been deported from France for begging but must make the humiliating journey back to provide for her family.brThe film is complex, yet simple. It essentially asks wheather we can ever really communicate, wheather we are ever aware of the significance of our actions and most devastatingly wheather we have a duty to help even if we are not asked for help. Do we have a responsibility.brHaneke's film is a technical tour-de-force, with perfectly sublime performances. Binoche has not been better since her days with Kieslowski. Her performance as the dispossessed actress is raw and real. The final scenes devastating in their effectiveness and simplicity.brThis is a film that is hard to decipher. It will take numerous viewings, but is certainly worth it. Do yourself a favour and stick with it. Supreme! What we have here is a failure to communicate... August 13, 2005 Trevor Willsmer (London, England) 30 out of 36 found this review helpful Code Unknown was a revelation. The first Michael Haneke film I've seen, I was surprised at how vitriolic the reviews have been here and on the film's IMDB page - arty-fartsy and incomprehensible seems to be the general concensus, yet I found it remarkably vital and accessible for a film revolving around race relations and everyday failures to communicate. Starting with an incident on a French boulevard where misinterpreted actions have consequences for all the wrong people, it proceeds in a series of incomplete scenes by people linked by the incident or their relationships with those involved, taking in a multi-ethnic city where so many people have shut off from those around them that they either fail to understand each others' problems or to even make the effort. pWhat's particularly interesting is that it plays on the audiences own prejudices and presuppositions - at one point we naturally assume that a young black character is seated away from the window booth he requested in a restaurant because of his color, but no: it's because he turned up 45 minutes late and the place is busy. Similarly, it doesn't presume that people in what are supposed to be empathetic or compassionate professions are inherently good - when Juliette Binoche's actress asks her war photographer boyfriend advice about the sounds of child abuse from a neighboring flat, he doesn't want to know and her anger is more because he won't give her an out but forces the situation back on her. Her solution: ignore it. Even the innocent victim of the opening incident has to admit with shame that she herself had done the same thing to people she looked down on. It's beautifully worked out with several powerful sequences that are uncomfortably familiar to city dwellers (the metro sequence is particularly powerful) and somehow comes across as exhilarating as it is uncomfortable. Great filmmaking - and a nice extras package on the DVD, too. Haneke is a Genius May 12, 2007 William Cohen (London) 4 out of 4 found this review helpful Michael Haneke is an infuriating director. He bores you on purpose sometimes. This film is episodic and frequently banal - there is a five minute sequence of Juliette Binoche ironing a T-shirt. br / br /But it really shakes you up. I lived for seven years in Bayswater, a multicultural community in the heart of London. Watching Haneke's characters stroll down the Boulevard St Germain, I knew exactly what he was saying. In modern cities there is so much confusion and misunderstanding. How can we make sense of it all? How should we behave? br / br /The scene in the Metro is another example of how urban life is so lonely and frightening. He goes behind the scenes to Rumania, to see snapshots of the life Eastern European beggars abandon to be in the big cities. He shows the families behind the individuals. br / br /Binoche is beautiful as always. Prepare to be bored, but at the same time enthralled by this film which gives you the feel of what it's like to be alive in a big European city in the C21st. Superb! September 13, 2001 16 out of 20 found this review helpful The best Binoche film since Three Colours Blue.I saw this film twice at the cinema and will definately buy the video. The film is highly emotive, funny, sad, frustrating, moves fast and does not end! Truly brilliant film. A story of a Parisian block of flats and the interconnected lives of the occupants. It's easy December 17, 2007 Mr. S. T. Morris (London) 4 out of 7 found this review helpful If you do not wish to be challenged by films, if you do not wish to think about what you are seeing, if you think that the only point of a film is to entertain, if you think that a plot line must be spelt out, if you don't mind some dodgy dialog and schmaltzy acting as long as the explosions are big, DON'T WATCH THIS MOVIE. It is not for you, please don't watch it because I fear it will make you angry, so angry that you may feel the need to spew your venom on this review page, unnecessarily filling cyberspace with a load of old pony that will only go to prove that you have the intellectual sensibility of a halfwit guttersnipe. br / br /Anyone else, go ahead, at the very least it will make you think, personally I thought it was fantastic. Showing reviews 1-5 of 13 1 2 3 Next »

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